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I just got another junk mail from SDL urging me to buy Trados Studio 2011. The price? Lower than ever. Well, should I rush out and buy another license? Hmm. Not so fast. Falling prices usually indicate a drop in demand, and this time it’s easy to guess why this is happening. It’s called the cloud and my guess is that it is suppressing the sales of Trados.
Lots of software companies are moving to a SaaS (software as a service) model. For example Adobe. Now you can buy affordable monthly subscriptions for their most popular products, like Adobe InDesign. It makes sense for customers. Instead of spending a lot of money in advance for a software license, you can buy the license for small sums when you need it. Customers also get the latest version of the product in a SaaS environment. But if you buy a one-time license, then you need to spend extra money each time you want to upgrade. The SaaS model is also good for the vendor. Because after a year or so, the customer has already spent more money than they would for a one-time license purchase.
There are a number of vendors that sell online CAT tools. One example of a CAT tool vendor that sells a monthly SaaS subscription is Czech-based Memsource. I recently met the CEO of this company, a very nice man named David Canek. Memsource has a free version which you can use to evaluate the product. And a monthly subscription starts at $25 per month so you can try the tool for a while and if it does not work out, just cancel the subscription. This makes more financial sense than paying a lot of money for a software license and then finding out that it is unsuitable for your needs.
Will SDL move Trados to the cloud in order to keep up with the competition? Rumors have it that their acquisition of Language Weaver was not a huge success and that there is a lot if infighting going on between the new MT group and the CAT tools group at SDL. Sales of software tools account for approximately 40% of the revenue at SDL. With the decline in the sales of Trados, SDL will need to do something to boost sales of its CAT tools. Otherwise it may become just another big LSP. The stock market has spoken as well and the price of SDL stock has tumbled about 35% in the last 6 months.
Have you ever used a CAT tool on a subscription basis? Which one? Are you considering such a tool? Leave us a comment with your thoughts.
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Czechoslovakia? Are you sure? This country ceased to exist nearly 20 years ago…
Hi Dusan, thanks for pointing that out. Is it OK now?
An extremely high price is definitely a problem with SDL Trados. I have just one license for SDL Trados 2011 that I need to be able to check the final SDLXLIFF files that I translate with a different tool. And even though I do own a license, I’m not interested in learning or using it because of the prohibitive price—I just don’t want to get hooked on something that costs so much and will require huge investments down the road.
I have Trados 2007 which was a pain in the xxx from the beginning. This is the first cause for the decline in popularity of this program. There are other very good CAT tools, like MemoQ, which are more succesful, user friendly and less expensive.
Cloud computing might have an influence, but not yet so extensive as you might think.
Most of the texts I deal with are confidential, and I wouldn’t take the risk to use these sensitive material in a cloud-based tool. There are many other linguists that deal with confidential and sensitive materials that are not taking take the risk and continue using traditional CAT tools.
Thanks Roman, the high price of SDL Trados is certainly a barrier for many people. Especially freelance translators who do not have large budgets for software purchasing. And freelancers are probably the biggest market for SDL.
Thanks Tzviya, I did not consider the confidentiality aspect when discussing online CAT tools. Certainly that is an important consideration. I would like to hear how the online CAT vendors are contending with this issue. Perhaps someone will comment on this.
I myself think that the security issue may be overplayed by some people. If the license agreement of the online CAT tool states that they commit to not use or retain your content in any way, that is probably sufficient. After all, what’s there to stop any company from eavesdropping on your work. SDL can do it if they want to. And Microsoft can monitor your Word files if they want to. What guarantee do you have that they are not? Just their word on it.
I agree that a monthly subscription is a good way to test a product, Dave. Some tools, such as MemSource, also offer “linguist” licenses that agencies can lend out to translators for specific projects, which is an interesting option.
Personally I’m happier with a project set up on my machine, not up in the cloud where project managers can look in to see my progress (when I use a linguist license). I feel it’s a bit of a big brother thing, with someone looking over my shoulder all the time.
The potential for cloud applications is a hot topic. In fact, I wrote a blog article on my experience of Studio 2011 and MemSource just a couple of weeks ago. If anyone wants to read a comparison of the two, side-by-side, here’s the link: http://signsandsymptomsoftranslation.com/2012/11/09/memsource/
Emma
Manuel H. • Hello Paul,The info you are looking for can be found in the screenshot which Studio 2009 asks users when connecting to the MT engines. It can be seen in Spanish in our blog entry http://bit.ly/j9rkGP . I guess the English version would read something like “When connecting, you accept to send text to an external machine translation provider over the Internet and you declare that you will neither break your agreement with the data owner nor stop complying with the applicable laws. The usage [output] of this provider will be shown in the bilingual file.Do you wish to connect?Yes / No[tick option] Do not ask me again.”It is known that anyone can use the source language as the basis for monolingual training, so perhaps that is the data being transmitted. I don’t know. It is something for you to clarify internally. As the message stands, anyone using the MT features agrees to “send text to an external machine translation provider over the Internet”. What kind of data is sent, I do not know.In any case, if you say there is no data being transmitted despite the above warning (again, check the screenshot), I will leave it there.As a Studio 2009 user, you will have noticed that there is a noticeable delay when approving a segment when using the external MT API, something that does not happen when working with local translation memories. This has been pointed out to us by external freelancers and users in general and it was the basis for the query about the application being used as an i/o retrieval facility, particularly because of the above “warning”.
Actually, you can buy Trados for 99 Euro and for most task that version is good enough. Specially if you mainly need it to work on packages that you get from clients. I think Trados 2011 is worth the upgrade and far better than 2007 or 2009. And no, I don’t get money from Trados
I think the trend is clear that many of the applications relevant to our work will be moving to an Internet-based SaaS model or offer such licensing as an alternative. There will also be more web-based extensions of functionality like Kilgray’s Language Terminal and well beyond that.
The “security” concerns that many translators have are rather silly. If encrypted connections are used, I doubt there is really much of an issue; aside from the potential of some applications currently used to send information via the Internet without authorization, I think a great number of my colleagues who moan so loudly about confidentiality send confidential documents unencrypted via e-mail. When they *stop* doing that I might take their concerns more seriously.
On the other hand, I do appreciate the concerns of translators who don’t like working on server-based projects where progress monitoring or premature leveraging of content is possible. But when I think of Cloud apps for translation, I remember the great boost in productivity I have enjoyed with a TM or termbase shared with a partner on a project – a project whose data only we could access. I expect a lot of applications will come which empower individuals as much as any agencies or corporations.